Ron's News

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[High consumption of fructose leads directly to heart attacks. *RON*]
Medical Press, 17 June 2015

ETH researchers have found a hitherto unknown molecular mechanism that is driven by fructose and can lead to cardiac enlargement and heart failure.
'Walk through any supermarket and take a look at the labels on food products, and you'll see that many of them containfructose, often in the form of sucrose (table sugar)'—that's how Wilhelm Krek, professor for cell biology at ETH Zurich's Institute for Molecular Health Sciences, summarises the problem with today's nutrition. Prepared foods and soft drinks in particular, but even purportedly healthy fruit juices contain fructose as an artificial additive—often in high quantities.In recent decades fructose spread throughout the food market, due to a reputation as being less harmful than glucose. In contrast to glucose, fructose barely increases blood glucose levels and insulin secr…

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[Black injustice tipping point. Obama says this wouldn't happen in any other nation in the world. See also Charleston Church Shooting Suspect, Dylann Storm Roof, Is Captured and This Photo Captures America's Relationship with Guns. *RON*]

By Jason Horowitz, Nick Corasaniti & Ashley Southall, New York Times, 17 June 2015

CHARLESTON, S.C. — A white gunman opened fire Wednesday night at a historic black church in downtown Charleston, S.C., killing nine people before fleeing and setting off an overnight manhunt, the police said.

At a news conference with Charleston’s mayor early Thursday, the police chief, Greg Mullen, called the shooting a hate crime.

“It is unfathomable that somebody in today’s society would walk into a church while they are having a prayer meeting and take their lives,” he said.

The police said the gunman walked into the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church around 9 p.m. and began shooting.

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[Black injustice tipping point. Amnesty International report describes ‘shocking lack of fundamental respect for the sanctity of human life’ as nine states have no laws to deal with police force. *RON*]

Oliver Laughland and Jamiles Lartey, The Guardian, 18 June 2015
Every state in the US fails to comply with international standards on the lethal use of force by law enforcement officers, according to a report by Amnesty International USA, which also says 13 US states fall beneath even lower legal standards enshrined in US constitutional law and that nine states currently have no laws at all to deal with the issue.

The stinging review comes amid a national debate over police violence and widespread protest following the high-profile deaths of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; 43-year-old Eric Garner in New York; 50-year-old Walter Scott in South Carolina; and 25-year-old Freddie Gray in Baltimore – all unarmed black men killed by pol…

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[Pontiff’s 180-page intervention in climate change debate casts blame for ‘ecological crisis’ on the indifference of the powerful. This statement has already been met with outraged resistance from the evangelical religious right in the United States, and three-quarters of American Catholics do not believe global warming is caused by humans. *RON*]
Stephanie Kirchgaessner, The Guardian, 18 June 2015

Pope Francis has called on the world’s rich nations to begin paying their “grave social debt” to the poor and take concrete steps on climate change, saying failure to do so presents an undeniable risk to a “common home” that is beginning to resemble a “pile of filth”.

The pope’s 180-page encyclical on the environment, released on Thursday, is at its core a moral call for action on phasing out the use of fossil fuels.

But it is also a document infused with an activist anger and concern for the poor, casting blame on the indifference of the powerful in the …

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[The Los Angeles Police Department is deploying police officers with clinicians—and reducing incidents of force used on mentally ill people. This is a great model - it has been used for many years in Vancouver, BC in the form of a program called Car 86. *RON*]
 Noelle Swan, Take Part / Christian Science Monitor, 16 June 2015.

They called her the “million dollar woman.”

Los Angeles 911 dispatchers heard from her on a daily basis—sometimes multiple times.

The complaint was always the same: The caller said she couldn’t breathe. Each time, emergency crews packed her into an ambulance. And each time, unable to find any medical problem, emergency room doctors released her without treatment.

Those ER visits cost the city more than $1 million in a single year—and did little to assist the woman, says Lt. Lionel Garcia, longtime director of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Mental Evaluation Unit.

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[There has been little interpretive response about this story in the news so far. However, in the general region there has been much protest. See Lax Kw'alaams Band reject $1B LNG deal near Prince Rupert, Gitxsan block B.C. highway in LNG protest, and divided responses elsewhere, e.g., B.C. First Nations Chief creates alliance for LNG supporters amid backlash. *RON*]
The Canadian Press, Vancouver Observer, 18 June 2015

CALGARY — A multibillion-dollar liquefied natural gas project led by Royal Dutch Shell was given the environmental go-ahead on Wednesday, subject to dozens of conditions. The terminal would require 350 LNG tankers in the Douglas Channel, or about one per day.

The LNG Canada project — planned for Kitimat B.C. — obtained the blessing of both the federal and British Columbia governments following a streamlined review process.

The federal government has decided the environmental impacts of the LNG Canada project are justified in the…

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[This important issue is poorly understood by Canadians, most of whom have never heard of it. But, joining the Bank of International Settlements (which, COMER is now arguing in court, is illegal) is what has truly created most of Canada's debt; it has very little to do with the social programs that Conservatives trot out as the cause of all our economic woes. *RON*]
By Judy Kennedy, rabble.ca, 15 June 2015


The great challenge of our time is wresting control of our lives from Big Money, beginning with the control of our national finance.

Our forefathers did just that 80 years ago during the Great Depression when they established the central bank, The Bank of Canada. The Bank was to be owned by the people of Canada, responsible to Parliament, and generally to promote the economic and financial welfare of Canada.

One of the functions mandated to The Bank of Canada is making loans to the federal and provincial governments (and indirectly, to the mun…

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["...the Minister for Public Security was happy to dismiss the entire report on the basis of that one, short paragraph. His philosophy seems to be: when in doubt, reach for the t-word.... At other times there has been a word for that sort of accusatory tactic. That word is McCarthyism. *RON*]
By Karl Nerenberg, rabble.ca, 18 June 2015

On Tuesday, when Opposition members questioned the government about the findings of the massive Voices-Voix report, Dismantling Democracy, Public Security Minister Steven Blaney answered that the government would "take no lessons" from people who "support terrorist organizations."

Blaney was referring to a one-paragraph reference, in the 62-page Voices-Voix report, to IRFAN Canada -- the International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy -- which the government recently classified as a terrorist organization.

You can find that brief reference on page 57, in the chapter entitled: "Sile…